Published on April 30, 2010 by Karen Letain in News
eLearning plays an extremely important role in terms of sustainability. For those organizations looking to be more sustainable and save costs in the process, eLearning is the best way to improve and expand employee skill sets without having to incur additional travelling costs.
eLearning helps organizations expand training opportunities to more employees in more places. It’s available on-demand, providing instant learning at a moment’s notice. For organization’s looking to impart new security policies to their staff and educate them on new best practices, eLearning is the most efficient and cost-effective method of deployment.
Published on December 04, 2009 by Karen Letain in Other, Planning
At schools and colleges across the country and around the world, the use of the Internet and Web for learning and teaching is causing a major change in the landscape of education. Building upon decades of computer networking activities (e.g. e-mail and bulletin board systems), the Internet has produced phenomenal growth in the extent and scope of online education.
Online education has created a new paradigm for teaching and learning different from the traditional classroom experience, and also different from earlier attempts at computer-based instruction. instructional methods and strategies employed in online courses are essentially the same as those used by instructors in their traditional classes, with the exception of student interaction and collaboration.
While online education certainly has it benefits from an ROI perspective over traditional classroom methods, what is inherently missing is the "interaction and collaboration" part. As social media and online communities continue to expand and grow in popularity, educators will need to be able to tap into this new method of communication and adapt online education to fit with the new bite-sized, instantaneous learning methodology. How can we use tools like twitter to get the message through and make it stick? Here is our opportunity to build social education communities and interact with each other regardless of distance to share and learn in a community fashion. How inspiring is that? How are you going to use this new medium in your training plans?
Published on July 23, 2009 by Karen Letain in Metrics, News, Planning
I have talked quite a bit in this blog about successful awareness training program factors, yet, I keep hearing stories from clients and friends about awareness training programs that are just not able to deliver.
The success of a security awareness program really depends upon the delivery of the information and how it is tailored for each audience. Security awareness training should be delivered to end users in each department as well as incorporated into new employee orientation. This can be administered using an online training format in small learning bites that are easily digestible and delivered per month or quarter or through instructor-led sessions or smaller, informal lunch and learn's. For managers and executives it may be more receptive if delivered in an instructor-led session format or online but with lessons geared toward IT risks that managers/executives need to be aware of.
When considering training options for your employees you will need to consider both instructor led and online learning formats. In security awareness training there are instances when both are required. If you need to conduct general end user security awareness training, online training options have certain efficiencies and cost advantages. Cost factors include course development, instructor time, instructor salaries, preparation time, classroom costs, travel expenses, material costs and employees time.
Other factors that are not included when looking at costs are the speed of delivery of the training and the instructional efficiency. Instructional efficiency is where all of the information delivered leads to learning that improves performance (reference - Moran, J.V. 2002 - ROI for E-Learning http://wwwlearningcircuits.org/2002/feb2002/moran.html). Online learning's advantage over instructor-led training is that it can be delivered in a timely, consistent way with the ability to easily update materials.
In the second part of this series, we will look at the advantages and disadvantages for the learner from both a delivery and efficiency factor. Stay tuned!
